Yesterday all of us went out to eat at Subway (the newest Western food joint in town) then to Computer City. Computer City is a 6-floor building with new & used computer stuff (Daddy’s playground). JK needed her phone, but couldn’t find it in her clothes and bags that we were carrying. So, as a good husband always does, I called it to help her find it. Instead of hearing it ringing somewhere nearby, a lady answered it. She said that she found it in a taxi just outside of Computer City and that we should come and get it. She gave us the address of her location and we went and got it.

This is just crazy! We had heard of such kindness in Qingdao, and have now experienced it two times. When we lived in the South, if you left something in a taxi or lost it on the street, you could pretty much write it off as a loss. Taxi drivers – or the next passengers of the taxi – rarely if ever return lost items. More than one of our friends in the South lost very nice guitars to the “terrible taxi trunks”, forgotten for only a few seconds, but never to be seen again. They called the taxi companies. They offered rewards. But never was anything returned.

In Qingdao, however, we’ve even heard of iPods getting returned. In our own experience, JK lost a wallet on the side of the street. Someone looked inside, found an address the he recognized and took it there. The address was on a receipt from Anna’s kindergarten. The kindergarten called us and told us to come and get it.

Here’s the best part, in all of our experiences here in Qingdao, no one has ever tried to get a reward out of it. We’ve tried to give one but they have only refused*. What is it about Qingdao that people are honest and trouble themselves to return lost items?

*It should be noted that when we recovered JK’s wallet, it was missing a couple hundred RMB (about 30 USD), but that doesn’t take away from that effort of the person that brought it back. If he took the money, then I guess that counts as his reward. Either way, we were happy to have her ID and bank card back.